163: Chapter 163 Seaview No. 7

The moment qingsuo no. 2 departed the Linhai Port Area, the entire pier was dead silent and devoid of light; not a single lamp was lit to see it off.

At the bow, only a single instrument light covered by thick cloth remained, its brightness barely enough to discern the compass needle, failing to illuminate even a fraction of the pitch-Black Sea ahead. Deputy Captain He Yuan sat steadily at the helm, gripping the steering wheel tightly, his breathing kept extremely light, not daring to disturb this eerie darkness.

Tide sat in the side seat, continuously reporting the real-time Tide levels and wind direction. Her usually clear and crisp voice now carried a hint of imperceptible hesitation; when she read the third set of data, her voice suddenly cut off.

"What's wrong?" Deputy Captain He Yuan asked in a low voice.

"The Tide level isn't right."

"Is it rising or falling?"

"Neither rising nor falling." Tide stared intently at the static values on the screen, her brows furrowed. "The Tide of the entire sea has stopped completely."

As these words fell within the cabin, no one responded, leaving only an increasingly oppressive silence.

At the back of the cabin, Bai Ya leaned against the cold bulkhead, his fingertips gathering a thread of Fire Seal as thin as gossamer. The firelight was restrained and did not leak out, slowly traveling along the edge of the deck like a bird holding its breath, quietly scouting the path in the boundless darkness.

Wu sat opposite him, quietly holding a spare life jacket in his arms.

Before departure, Chen Jue had stuffed two markers into his pocket, specifically instructing him that whenever he encountered anything unusual, if he forgot the details, he should write them on his palm. Wu took out the pens and examined them for a long time, but eventually put them back exactly as they were, without using a single one.

"Afraid the writing will be wiped away by the seawater?" Bai Ya asked softly.

"I'm afraid that after I write it, I won't be able to tell who left the mark." Wu replied softly, his tone flat yet hiding a deeper meaning.

Bai Ya was silent for a moment, then flipped a thin Fire Seal into his palm and handed it to him.

"Don't write names," he instructed. "Only write what you see with your own eyes."

Wu took the Fire Seal and nodded solemnly.

Space Venerable squatted on the cabin floor, with three charts spread out before him: a yellowed old sea chart, the engineering structure diagram of the port area, and the latest navigation chart updated by Tide. He repeatedly superimposed and compared the routes, his brows locking tighter and tighter, his expression becoming increasingly grave.

Zhao Ye watched with impatience and asked bluntly, "Where is the entrance?"

"There is no entrance at the moment," Space Venerable replied, looking up.

"Then why have you been deducing things from the charts for so long?"

"I am looking for a load-bearing surface that shouldn't exist." Space Venerable pointed his fingertip at a blank area on the sea chart. "Wanghai No. 7 was originally a fixed offshore observation platform with deep-buried pile foundations on the seabed. Now, there are no records on the charts and no coordinates entered, but in Tide's records, this sea area has been stagnant for years. If the platform is still there, it can only be suspended in the gap between two layers of the sea."

Zhao Ye felt a headache from hearing this straightforward explanation.

"Speak plainly."

"If we sail straight there, we might not necessarily run into it."

"Then how are we supposed to get on it?"

Space Venerable turned his head to look at Wu, who was sitting quietly to the side.

Wu had already firmly attached the Fire Seal to his palm, and a line of minimalist text slowly emerged on the surface of the thin sheet: [Empty Space.]

After the vessel sailed deep into the open sea, the sea surface became completely dead silent. The entire sea area was without wind or waves, as smooth as a boundless sheet of pitch-black glass. The wake left by the stern was instantly smoothed over by the darkness. There was no sound of wind, no smell of the sea, no trace of seabirds, and even the roar of the engine was suppressed layer by layer by the heavy night curtain, dull to the point of suffocation.

A fine layer of cold sweat soaked Deputy Captain He Yuan's temples, and he asked in a deep voice, "Radar status?"

The crew member staring at the screen swallowed hard, his voice tight: "Coastline detected ahead."

"How far away?"

"Zero distance."

Everyone looked up sharply. Ahead of the bow, there was clearly an endless expanse of empty sea.

Tide suddenly reached out and grabbed Deputy Captain He Yuan's arm tightly, her tone urgent: "Stop the ship!"

Deputy Captain He Yuan didn't need to ask more; he instantly pulled down the power lever. qingsuo no. 2 glided slowly for a short distance on the inertia of the sea surface, eventually coming to a complete stop upon the dead-silent Black Sea.

The moment the hull came to a complete stop, the heavy seawater ahead seemed to be parted by an invisible giant hand.

A rusted and mottled offshore platform slowly emerged from the depths of the darkness to reveal its full appearance. It was eerily close, as if it had been silently lurking in front of the bow the entire time. The steel support frames were covered in thick black salt crusts, and on the old sign, soaked by years of seawater, only one line of barely legible text remained: Wanghai No. 7.

Behind the glass window on the top level of the platform stood a slender, tall figure. He did not turn on any lights, but simply raised his hand to press a sheet of white paper flat against the cold glass. The writing on the paper was clear: Don't call out names.

Zhao Ye was the first to leap onto the platform. When his feet landed on the iron plate, there was not a single sound of impact. This silence was more chilling and spine-tingling than the iron plate collapsing and shattering.

Shen Qinghe remained at the Linhai Port Area, fully guarding the last line of Fire Beacon defense on the shore. Only Zhao Ye, Bai Ya, Wu, and Space Venerable boarded the platform. Tide remained on qingsuo no. 2, keeping a close watch on the eerily static Tide level changes throughout, and Deputy Captain He Yuan also did not leave the port, standing firm at the helm to control the vessel.

The platform corridor was long, narrow, and deep, the iron plates underfoot covered in damp, cold salt stains, feeling sticky and icy to step on. An old calendar hung on the wall, the date permanently frozen on a day seventeen years ago. On every page of the calendar, someone had heavily crossed out a name with a pencil; the strokes varied in depth, hiding endless secrets.

Wu stopped in front of a cabin door. The door number was empty, a blank slate. "Someone lived here for a long time," he said softly.

Zhao Ye looked back: "How can you be sure?"

Wu lowered his hand and pointed below the door crack to a pair of slippers placed neatly. The uppers were clean and dry, without a trace of seawater dampness; they were definitely not items abandoned for years.

The glass door at the end of the corridor suddenly swung open inward on its own. The tall, thin figure stood silently behind the door, his face deathly pale, with heavy dark circles under his eyes, as if he hadn't slept for years. He first cast his gaze toward Wu, then slowly raised his eyes to look at Zhao Ye, his lips moving slightly.

Just as Zhao Ye was about to ask a question, the other party had already raised a finger and pressed it gently against his lips. "Don't call me," his voice was hoarse and dry, carrying the hesitation of long-term silence. "This place will record every sound."

Bai Ya's gaze fell upon the old work badge hanging on his chest; the name field had long been eroded away by seawater and was empty, but the black-and-white photo on the ID was still clear and intact. The person noticed his gaze, and the corners of his mouth twitched ever so slightly—a smile that wasn't quite a smile, revealing endless loneliness. "I gave myself a name," he said. "Starry Sky."

It was as if even this name was feared to be recorded by the darkness and captured by the void. He paused briefly, then added in a low voice, "From now on, just call me that."

Starry Sky stepped aside to lead the way, bringing the group into the innermost observation room. Inside, the circle of old instruments had all stopped working, the screens pitch-black and dead, having long since lost their operational functionality. However, the four walls were covered with handwritten notes; the paper had been eroded by years of sea wind and dampness, the edges all curled and peeling. There were no complete sentences on them, only short, cold, and hard warnings: [Don't ask who is outside the door.] [If you hear your own voice, don't answer.] [The Tide sound has stopped, close your eyes first.]

On the most prominent note by the window, the handwriting had been repeatedly traced and thickened, the ink heavy and shocking to the eye: [Each time the platform lights up, the shore gets closer.]

Bai Ya caught a glimpse of seven empty tin cans arranged neatly and orderly on the table. On the inside of each lid, a straight horizontal line was carved, with a tiny dot at the end of the line. "Is this recording the days?" he asked.

Starry Sky shook his head gently. "It's the number of times I've seen the Black Shore."

He raised his hand and pointed to the last tin can. The horizontal lines on it were dense, overlapping and crisscrossing, almost indistinguishable. In the center of the lid, there was also a bone-chillingly deep knife mark. "Starting from yesterday, it no longer stops to watch from the outside."

Zhao Ye frowned: "Where is it?"

Starry Sky lowered his eyes, looking at the cold iron plate beneath everyone's feet. "It has been under the platform the whole time, waiting."

Wu subconsciously looked down. There was no water seeping through the gaps in the iron plate, but a drop of pitch-black salt bead was slowly oozing out from deep within the gap. The salt bead rolled slowly, brushing past the tips of Wu's shoes, and finally stopped at the edge of the faint light emitted by the Fire Seal in his palm, hesitating to approach, as if testing the origin of this glimmer, testing whether it could call out its name.

In the corner of the observation room, several boxes of expired compressed biscuits were stacked, the packaging bags all bloated and puffed up, having long since spoiled. Starry Sky had not touched them in the slightest, and he spoke of the past in a low voice: At first, there were others guarding the platform, but later, food ran out, water tanks were damaged, cutting off the water source. The remaining people took turns guarding the old radio, and whenever they heard the sound of a ship on the sea, they would walk to the window and tap on the glass, hoping to be discovered by the human world.

"What happened to those people later?" Space Venerable asked in a deep voice.

Starry Sky's gaze fell back to the old calendar on the wall, his tone as light as a sea breeze, yet full of sorrow. "Some pushed open the darkness outside the door; some said they were going to go down into the sea to find fresh water."

His voice paused, his tone trembling slightly. "And some... were still sitting at the table the next day. I just don't dare to confirm whether the ones sitting there were still them."

Zhao Ye did not continue to press, silently moving to the workbench. On the table lay a pair of reading glasses with one broken temple, beside which rested half of a yellowed family photo. The people in the photo had simple, warm smiles, with the clear blue sky when Wanghai No. 7 was first built as the background, clean and bright.

At this moment, this eerie and sinister deep-sea platform shed its mysterious and terrifying coat, leaving only endless desolation. This place was nothing more than a cage where a group of people were forever detained and trapped in the cracks of time and space.

Just at this moment, the walkie-talkie on qingsuo no. 2 outside the platform suddenly rang, Tide's voice urgent and pressing, breaking through the silence. "Get out immediately!" "The sea is rising!"

Everyone turned back sharply, their hearts tightening. The Black Sea outside the platform was not rising to flood the deck. The entire boundless pitch-Black Sea area was pressing down heavily from the high sky above.